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Google Acquires JotSpot and Ventures into Wikis

Google has gobbled up yet another company in its recent wave of acquisitions. The search engine giant recently announced that it has acquired JotSpot, a Silicon Valley wiki provider.

Google's venture into wikis is not completely surprising. Wikis, which are web-based applications that enable people to easily post and edit information, have become increasingly popular as the Web 2.0 trend continues. Many websites have been expanding their sites to include wiki applications. Amazon.com hopped on the wiki bandwagon in April when they added a function which enables users to write and edit product reviews on its site. (Source: fool.com)

JotSpot co-founder Joe Kraus expressed his enthusiasm about the deal on a Google blog: "As we built the business over the past three years Google consistently attracted our attention. We watched them acquire Writely, and launch Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets and Google Apps for Your Domain. It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online." (Source: vnunet.com)

Many have pointed to the countless similarities between wikis and Google Docs, one of Google's collaborative editing programs. In addition to Google Docs' editing capabilities, wikis also have the ability to create web pages, and to include interactive material (such as polls) on the pages. The strong parallels between the two have led many experts to predict a merging of Google Docs with its newly acquired wiki tools. (Source: news.com)

As far as wiki companies go, JotSpot was a logical choice for Google. Not only does the company offer wiki tools that are more user-friendly that many first generation wikis, the company also brags a healthy customer base. JotSpot currently has over 30,000 paying customers and 300,000 free users. (Source: reuters.com)

With Google's recent wave of acquisitions (most recently, Writely and YouTube), the company has shown that they are hungry for more than just Internet searches. Welcome, JotSpot -- you're the newest item on Google's plate.